Prettiness, pettiness and pitiful preferences

A practically perfect day, aside from the grumpiness of certain people that might well have been me.

The boys have only been on a train twice, once for the sake of it: we got the train from Kirkcaldy to Burntisland and back; and once on the Bo'ness Steam Railway. So today we thought we'd take them on an adventure and we got the train through to Edinburgh. It is a beautiful journey, and one which I have been doing on and off for 20 years. I miss it a bit, there's all the sights along the way, many of which have changed recently. But how nice to have two new pairs of eyes to point it all out to, and eyes belonging to people that don't think you're bonkers for caring like fellow commuters often do.

And then we arrived in Edinburgh and took ourselves off to Princes Street Gardens to travel on the Big Wheel.

Marvellous, and I was most pleased to note that the only tears were of frustration at not being able to get on till we got to the front of the queue. I took lots of photos and played around with the camera settings a bit (not enough, I have more learning to do).

Edinburgh Castle on automatic

Edinburgh Castle with a little tweaking

And then the children insisted we ride on the horses on the carousel, which pleased me immensely having never succeeded in getting anyone else to go on them. Waiting for the previous turn to end, I decided which horse was to be mine, as you do. Debating whether it was in fact the done thing to pull a small child off a horse because I wanted that one, imagine my joy when that horse just happened to be the next one and I got it.

This is he:

and this is why:

I was almost as happy as my son.

This, plus lunch, plus trying to understand the new system at Waverley took most of the afternoon and then we got the train home again as the sun set. I took some immensely rubbish pictures from the Forth Rail Bridge (the pillars don't half get in the way).

Expensive!!

Skint as we are, we are trying to make the most of the fact that until the children are three, they get into most things for free. OK, so they don't enjoy most of them, but it (possibly) beats a day of dough and CBeebies (oh! for a garden...).

But it still costs several limbs for us. I came across this (courtesy of Motley Fool) which is the cost of the most popular UK attractions:

(excuse the formatting...grrr)

Attraction	Standard adult entry fee
1	Stonehenge, Wiltshire	£6.50
2	Giant's Causeway, County Antrim	Free
3	Big Ben	N/A*
4	Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh	£12 (peak -- June-Sept)
5	Ben Nevis, Lochaber	Free
6	The Needles, Isle of Wight	Free
7	The Eden Project, Cornwall	£15
8	London Eye	£15.50
9	Blackpool Tower	£16.95
10	Angel of the North, Gateshead	Free

So basically, the only things that are free are things that are just there. Apart from Stonehenge because naturally that must have huge running costs to justify £6.50 from every visitor. £12 for Edinburgh Castle (peak season) ????? And why is that the 4th most popular attraction?

Go to Alton Towers, people! Spend your money wisely. You know you want to. And if you like stacks, go to Shetland; ok, they're not hexagonal, but they are magnificent.